Roberta Blackman-Woods: Thank you, Mr Hanson. It is a pleasure to serve under your chairmanship again.
The amendment seeks to include a specific duty on the office for students in the Bill, to make it clear that maintaining confidence in the sector must be high up the OFS agenda. The UK’s higher education sector has an extremely strong global reputation, and a degree from a university in the UK is generally of high value. The Bill must therefore protect the reputation of the  sector, especially in the context of an increasingly competitive global market and the possible negative ramifications of Brexit for our universities. If we do not mandate a body to look after the health of the entire sector, we risk losing that hard-earned status. The amendment, which would insert that duty in the Bill, therefore seeks to reassure the sector that the Government have its interests at heart, that they are listening to it and that they understand the need to promote and maintain confidence in it.
Amendment 136 is also sensible because it seeks to ensure that student interests are protected by including the need for consultation with students when putting an access and participation plan together. That is sensible, and I am not sure why someone would want to draw up a participation plan that is based on extending access to universities for additional students, but not to consult students—not to do so would seem nonsensical. I hope that the Minister will reassure us that students will be put at the heart of such plans and will be consulted when they are being drawn up.

Gordon Marsden: It is a pleasure to return to serving under your chairmanship, Mr Hanson. It is also a pleasure to speak in support of our amendments, and to back the amendment moved by my hon. Friend.
I will say no more on amendment 159—my hon. Friend the Member for City of Durham has put our case strongly—but amendment 136 is in line with the gist of what we have been arguing throughout consideration of the Bill so far: if we are to have an office for students, we need to involve students as often as possible in all its vital aspects. We are genuinely disappointed that, despite their warm words about the role of students, the Government still seem determined not to put anything in the Bill about it. Their vote against our amendment the other day underlined that.
Amendment 140 is the other side of the coin. I shall not detain the Committee for long with it, because in our extensive debate this morning the Minister took pains to make the point that he wanted to see collaboration and innovation. I do not want to suggest he should put his money where his mouth is; I merely invite him to insert a clause along the lines of our amendment. No doubt that would give some comfort to the groups that have been concerned about collaboration and innovation.
I have reserved most of my remarks on this group for amendment 141, which would ensure that the OFS takes on board
“the need to promote adult, part-time and lifelong learning”.
Again, many warm words have been said about such things during our consideration of the Bill, but we want to see specifics and so do people in the sector. The Open University has expressed its view:
“A prosperous part-time higher education market is essential, now more than ever, to address the challenges and opportunities which lie ahead to deliver economic growth and raise national productivity…and to increase social mobility.”
I see a strong argument for lifelong learning and part-time higher education based on their social value, but we also need to think hard about the economic and demographic circumstances. The figures are quite stark: only 13% of the 9.5 million in the UK who are considering higher education in the next five years are school leavers.  The majority are working adults. That cannot be said too often, because the phraseology of the White Paper and the Bill has made it look as if we are in a ghetto that extends between the ages of 18 and 22, which is not the case.
I pursue the point that the Minister was keen to make this morning: over the next 10 years, there will be 13 million vacancies but only 7 million school leavers to fill them. This is bread-and-butter stuff; it is not an appeal to the Government’s better nature to give people second chances for the sake of it. If we do not empower people and we do not give those chances, the economy, our productivity and all sorts of other things will suffer.
There is a social dimension to the issue, underlined by the fact that one in five undergraduate entrants in England from low-participation neighbourhoods choose—or have no option, perhaps for financial reasons—to study part-time. Some 38% of all undergraduates from disadvantaged groups are mature students.
That is the need: what has the response been? Until relatively recently, I am afraid it has been what I can only describe as “poor”—I will not use the unfortunate alliterative word I was going to put in front of that. The situation that faces adult learners is bleak, both in further education and in higher education; lifelong learning in the UK has declined. I am sorry to take issue with the Minister’s statistics again, but the 24% cut to sections of the adult skills budget in 2015-16, along with the further 3.9% reduction, created a new large gap in college budgets.
As funding for non-apprenticeship skills has dropped, so has the number of learners. The latest data from the Skills Funding Agency show that 1.3 million learners have been lost from learning—excluding apprenticeships, which of course are the Government’s great get-out clause: they always say “Look at all the money we’ve lavished on apprenticeships”. They may have lavished money on apprenticeships—the end result is yet to be seen—but adult skills have been starved of funding in the process. That has not gone unnoticed by people in the sector. In its briefing to the Committee, Birkbeck said it was concerned that part-time students could be
“seen as an add-on rather than an integral part of the work of the OfS. Birkbeck would like to seek assurances that part-time students are an integral part of the Government’s thinking in the Bill.”
The Open University has made a number of similar points.
These issues do not affect only part-time and mature students; they affect the health of existing traditional universities that have found that by losing numbers of part-time and other students their funding and economic base has been chipped away at. They also, of course, affect some of the people in the workforces of those universities. That is why the trade union Unison, in submitting written evidence to the Committee, said:
“Opportunities for mature and non-traditional students should be increasing not decreasing.”
It points out that mature students accessing higher education via a part-time route, while often having caring responsibilities or employment issues, increases both their life chances and the life chances of their families. It is vital for workers who are retraining or reskilling themselves and the decline of this group is worrying for our future society when considering social mobility and providing access for those from social and economically deprived backgrounds.
Similar points have been made by the Workers Educational Association, union learning representatives and many in the trade union movement who are genuinely concerned about the impact of the dropping away of opportunities.
The Bill’s equality analysis claimed that there had been a dramatic improvement in the participation rate of disadvantaged young people. There has been an improvement, albeit from a low base, but I make the point again that that has not been seen for mature students where numbers have declined sharply. These huge challenges to social inequality and promoting social mobility in higher education were underlined by the survey of students by National Education Opportunities Network and University and College Union two months ago. It said:
“Over 40% may be choosing different courses and institutions than they would ideally like to because of cost and restricting the range of institutions they apply to by living at home or close to home.”
It added:
“The majority of students who are participating in post-16 courses which can lead to HE are not choosing to progress to HE because of cost.”
That is a real tragedy, not least because of the following. Here I would like to pay tribute to one of the Minister’s predecessors, the right hon. Member for South Holland and The Deepings (Mr Hayes). When we had the big debate about advanced learning loans early in the life of the coalition Government, there were expressions of concern that it would put people off if they had to take out a loan for HE access. The then coalition Government specifically gave ground on that issue. We welcomed their response to that campaign on behalf of the thousands, if not tens of thousands, of students doing HE access courses who found they did not then have to take out two sets of loans.
The benefit of that concession and of looking more holistically at the process will be undermined if the Government do not address the issues of what happens to those part-time or mature students when they eventually get into HE education. According to the NEON/UCU survey,
“Nearly 50% of students think they will undertake part-time working to afford to eat and live.”
The removal of grants, which the Government pressed hard on at the beginning of the year,
“will increase term-time working, especially for those from non-white backgrounds and those in receipt of free school meals”.
It is astonishing that in such a large Bill, the Government have not so far put centrally the importance of adult and part-time learning towards improving social mobility.
However, I am glad to say that although the Government may have been reticent or deficient in that respect, members of the other place have not, where only yesterday, there was a very significant and fruitful debate on lifelong learning. The points the participants made, a couple of which I will quote, bear repeating.
The issues were strongly put by Lord Rees, the former president of the Royal Society. He said in his speech that we needed to have a revolution in the way in which we formalised things into,
“a system that more readily allows for transfers between institutions and between part-time and full-time study. The demand for  part-time and distance learning will grow, speeded of course by the high fees now imposed on students at traditional residential universities”.
He also said,
“there are huge opportunities but to exploit them for maximum benefit our system needs a more diverse ecology … We need to remove the disincentives from mature students. We can exploit the benefits of IT to offer a better second chance to young people who have been unlucky in their earlier education”.
The Labour party needs no persuading of the importance of these issues, which is why I am glad that Lord Watson, in speaking for us yesterday talked about the importance of the WEA’s Save Adult Education campaign. He is a former OU tutor, as am I, although for a relatively short period at the start of my career as a tutor. He made the point again that it is essential for our economy and society that we continue to provide high-quality education for adults. In order to do that, the Minister and his colleagues need to address the dichotomy between the funding that has gone into apprenticeships and the reduction of funding over the period until 2016 that has gone into those other areas. This is like the Titanic, we cannot turn round overnight a very significant decline in adult education. It needs the Government to move rapidly on some of these issues. Lord Watson said:
“The data and assumptions underpinning the Higher Education and Research Bill, currently in Committee in another place, focus primarily on young, full-time students, without taking into account the value of other flexible learning options, such as part-time … It seems to have escaped the DfE’s notice that 38% of all undergraduate students from disadvantaged groups are mature, but it will need to take that statistic on board if it is to have any chance of delivering on the commitment to double the number of disadvantaged students entering higher education by 2020”.
I do not think that I can better what my colleague in the Lords said yesterday, except perhaps to pick up on another point that was made by Baroness Bakewell, the president of Birkbeck College, to which I have already referred. She said in the conclusion of her speech:
“What matters crucially now, not least for the Minister, is finance. It is difficult to finance these enterprises, but the Government have said that they support part-time maintenance loans. There is to be an official consultation on this, and I ask the Minister when that can begin. It cannot be too soon”.—[Official Report, House of Lords, 12 September 2016; Vol. 774, c. 1344-1366.]
I echo those sentiments and ask the Minister to think very carefully about them in his response. The amendment is a really important step in reminding the OFS when it comes into existence that the need to promote adult, part-time and lifelong learning is a crucial part of things. We all know the old saying, “What gets measured gets funded”. This needs to be measured and it also needs to be funded.

Jo Johnson: We obviously are thinking very carefully about the debates that we have at all stages of the Committee’s proceedings, and I am reflecting on how best we ensure that we achieve all our intentions to ensure that students are better represented in the sector’s systems and structures. We have put forward a proposal, which we discussed in great detail, in relation to the role of the OFS board in representing the student interest. We want to ensure that that is about more than representation and that the student interest genuinely is mainstreamed throughout everything that the OFS does.
That is why, for example, we absolutely recognise the need for access plans in particular to continue representing the sudent interest, and why in this Bill we are extending access plans to include participation and therefore looking at students and what happens for them right across their time in higher education. The hon. Member for Ilford North will appreciate that that goes far further than the plans introduced in 2004, which were limited to the point of access into higher education, rather than participation in and the benefits from higher education, to which we are seeking to extend them.
We will be embedding outreach activity to engage with students within the culture of the OFS, as part of its duty to promote quality and greater choice and opportunities for students. I would expect the OFS to use a range of ways to engage and consult with students, including social media, online consultation, and collaboration with partners, which has had wide reach in the past.
On amendment 140, the general duties of the OFS are absolutely consistent with the idea that providers should continue to collaborate and innovate in the new regulatory system, as we discussed extensively this morning. We are wholly supportive of collaboration where that is in the interests of students, and nothing in the Bill prevents it. Collaboration can take many forms, and we do not want to be prescriptive about what it should look like. I have listened carefully—

Jo Johnson: I start by thanking the hon. Gentleman for his helpful and pragmatic suggestions. Before I turn to his amendments, it might be helpful if I explained how we expect the OFS to operate this risk-based approach to regulation in practice.
The OFS will consult on, and then publish, the initial registration conditions that all providers will be required to meet before they are granted entry to the register. The conditions will relate to important matters such as quality, financial sustainability and standards of management and governance. Providers that cannot demonstrate that they meet these standards will not be registered. Additionally, if the OFS considers that an institution or an element of an institution, such as its financial sustainability, poses a particularly high risk, the OFS can add, change or tailor specific registration conditions to the risks posed by the provider.
Amendment 145 seeks to increase, from 28 to 40 days, the minimum time the OFS must allow for a provider to make further representations in the event of the OFS proposing to refuse a provider’s application for entry on to the register. Amendment 149 has a similar theme: it would increase, from 28 to 40 days, the minimum time for a provider to make representation to the OFS if the OFS proposed introducing or varying a condition of registration. Finally, amendment 173 seeks to increase from 28 to 40 days the minimum period of time for a provider to make representations to the OFS if the OFS proposes to suspend the provider from the register.
Allowing providers an absolute minimum of 28 days to make additional representations to the OFS is not, in itself, ungenerous. The OFS is required to act in a transparent, accountable and proportionate manner. It is our firm expectation that if a provider has a good case for needing additional time to make a representation, the OFS would and will allow it. Members will note that the minimum period of 28 days has precedents. It is a frequently used time period for allowing appeals and representations, appearing, for example, in section 151A (5) and (6), “Power to impose monetary penalties”, in the Apprenticeships, Skills, Children and Learning Act 2009.
We could have chosen to follow much tighter timescales for making representations, such as the 14-day warning notice period for sanctions imposed under the Financial Services and Markets Act 2000. We think a starting point of 28 days achieves the right balance between procedural fairness for the provider and an efficient, speedy outcome for others affected by the decisions, such as students.

Paul Blomfield: I note the Minister’s points and I am grateful for his acknowledgement of the role that the University of Sheffield has played. I endorse it and reiterate how grateful we were for the support, both in encouraging the pilot and getting it off the ground financially.
The Minister highlighted the fact that the University of Sheffield used the opportunity to tweak its bespoke software, which is right. In a sense, that makes it not easier, but more challenging, for the university, because the overwhelming majority of providers buy off-the-shelf software that is designed in partnership with user groups, and it is relatively easy to tweak that off-the-shelf software to minimise the cost for individual institutions.
The Minister said that the process should be voluntary. The important thing that should be voluntary in the process is students having the choice of whether to register. That is the important voluntary element, and that is what this system provides for. It simply draws students’ attention, when they are enrolling, to the opportunity to register and explains a little bit about that. They tick one box, which leads to another stage of providing a national insurance number. The important principle of voluntary engagement with the democratic process is at the heart of this system. I do not think it is unreasonable to expect providers to make such a minor adjustment when we are all committed to the principle.
The Minister makes the very fair point that this is not central to the purposes of the Bill, but I reflect back to him that the Government—and previous Governments—have on occasion been known to bung stuff into a Bill that was not central to its purposes when there was a convenient opportunity to do something that we all wanted to do. This is something that we all want to do.
Notwithstanding those reservations, if the Minister would commit to meeting me and the relevant Cabinet Office Minister to talk a little about how we can move this forward, I am happy to withdraw the amendment.

Gordon Marsden: I rise to speak to this miscellany of amendments which has a common theme. Clauses 5 and 6 are about the registration conditions. The Minister has quite rightly put emphasis on the innovation of having a central register and everything that goes with it. It is therefore incumbent on us to consider when registration conditions are made, that the OFS has considered the broadest range of recommendations about what will be very important decisions, either to allow a registration to go forward, or to revise it, sometimes in a minor way, but sometimes perhaps in a major way, or sometimes, of course, to refuse it. Because of that, the principle behind these amendments is that everybody who is involved in the life of that institution—insofar as practically possible—whether students, teachers, or the workforce that supports those institutions should have some input to that process.
Philosophically, that is a really important thing that the Bill and Ministers need to grasp. If we want to engage people more broadly in higher education, whether to work, to teach or to study in it, we have to give them a stake in the decisions that affect the institution where they are working. That is the principle behind the amendments.
Amendment 146 on the consultation of HE providers would omit, as far as the OFS is concerned, the phrase,
“if it appears to it appropriate to do so”.
This terminology is more redolent of an absolutist monarchy such as Louis XIV, or the Sun King, or whoever, than of a new transparent organisation. The language is, to use the French, de haut en bas. The Minister has excellent French, so he will know what I mean. To be honest, it is daft to say
“if it appears to it appropriate to do so”.
Of course it is appropriate to consult higher education providers in such circumstances.
Amendment 147 is very specific, and it states that in clause 5, after the word “providers” we should insert for the avoidance of doubt, as the phrase has it, “staff and students”. The amendment would ensure that there is some consultation with bodies or informal groups representing higher education staff and students. I refer to informal groups because again I am conscious, not least because the Opposition do not want to be accused of stopping progress and innovation, that some of these new providers will be relatively small and may have relatively informal groupings. It is therefore not unimportant that the position of their staff and students is taken into account.
Amendment 148 is probably the most vital of the three proposed amendments to clause 5. If there are to be changes to an institution’s registration conditions, its students and student body should be informed. Members of the Committee might think that is unnecessary, as the students and the student body are bound to be informed, but as I have said previously, we should legislate for the worst scenarios and the worst employers and not for the best. There are recent examples or allegations relating to major changes to London Metropolitan University’s terms and conditions. I once sat on a Committee down the corridor that was talking about providers, and people from London Metropolitan were eloquent on this issue. It is essential that the OFS has a proper information process—the OFS needs to take responsibility for this—that ensures that students and their representatives are properly informed of changes to their institution’s registration conditions. That is crucial.
Finally, clause 6 addresses the specific ongoing registration conditions. Subsection (6) currently states:
“The OfS must have regard to any representations made by the governing body of the institution…in deciding whether to take the step in question.”
It is important that the OFS may also consider representations from other relevant stakeholders it considers appropriate. I hope the Minister will note that we are not advocating an absolute duty on the OFS to consult such people, but we would ask it to do so on a case-by-case basis. It is important to establish the principle in the Bill that stakeholders other than the governing body should be able to make representations to the OFS. Those other stakeholders are people who have invested two or three years of their time and money in studying. They are people whose livelihoods depend on the institutions in question. It is surely not too much to ask that the OFS should be prepared, where appropriate, to consider their representations, too.

Jo Johnson: Yes, we expect to provide guidance to the OFS to give exactly those sorts of examples of the kinds of occasions on which it would be expected to consult widely on the changes to conditions required. In addition, more generally, the OFS will strongly encourage providers themselves to engage and consult with key stakeholders, including students, as a matter of good practice. Whether or not a general registration condition applies to a provider will be made clear on the OFS’s publicly available register.
Amendment 150 seeks to enable the OFS to take into account, when it thinks fit, representations from students and other stakeholders, as well as the provider itself, if the OFS decides to impose or vary a provider’s specific registration condition. The OFS does not need a power in the Bill to do this. It will always be able to listen to representations on various matters from various quarters if it thinks that doing so would add value. The effect of this clause in reality is likely to be to give representations made by other stakeholders and students an elevated status above representations made by any other party that may have a legitimate interest. That is because students and staff representations would be the only ones mentioned in the clause.
I am clear that, in certain circumstances, it will be in students’ interests that they are informed of a particular change to a provider’s registration conditions, and why that change has happened. The OFS already has the power, when it is appropriate, to compel a provider’s governing body to make sure that students are promptly informed about changes to a provider’s registration conditions. It is my clear expectation that the OFS will act in the interests of students, and will use its powers under clause 6 to make it a specific condition of registration that significant changes to a provider’s registration conditions are communicated promptly and accurately to students. On this basis, while I understand the intentions here, and fully agree with the need to promote these  important issues, I do not believe the amendments are necessary as the Bill already makes relevant provisions for them. I therefore ask hon. Members to consider withdrawing their amendments.

Roberta Blackman-Woods: I have a few questions for the Minister and am seeking some reassurances from him. One possible reading of the clause is that it could lead to dumbing down of the higher education sector by allowing a lesser form of regulation for colleges of a particular type, , whether a small FE college, a private provider or a small university.
Given what the Minister said earlier, I am sure that he wants to uphold the excellent reputation of the sector, so he will not want to put in place a regulatory system that could expose the sector to accusations of the quality not being uniform across all the players. I cannot see anything in the clause as drafted that will guarantee an equally rigorous approach across all the different types of institution, regardless of their track record. For example, a college might be good for a couple of years, but then have a poor principal or adverse market  conditions, resulting in it being not such a good provider. I am not exactly sure how, if we are going on a particular track record in a particular period of time in terms of the regulatory system, that is going to be captured. These are really a series of questions that I am posing to the Minister. Perhaps some of the detail in the regulations will help us to understand better what the clause will do in practice, but I have huge anxieties about it as currently drafted. I hope that the Minister is able to address those and help me to feel better.

Wes Streeting: I beg to move amendment 1, in clause8,page5,line23,at end insert—
“() a condition that requires the governing body of a provider to develop, publish and adhere to a Code of Practice on Student Information that must include, but shall not be restricted to, information across different academic departments relating to—
(i) the number of hours of contact time that students should expect on a weekly basis,
(ii) the processes and practices regarding marking and assessments, and
(iii) the learning facilities that are available to all students.
() a condition that requires the governing body of a provider to monitor performance against the expectations set by the Code of Practice on Student Information and publish an annual report on its findings.”
This amendment would place a duty on governing bodies of all registered providers to develop, publish and adhere to a Code of Practice on Student Information and monitor and report on progress against expectations set by that Code of Practice.
With this and subsequent amendments to the clause I shall return to the theme of trying to make the Bill into a bill of rights for students, so I hope that the Committee  will indulge me for a moment as I set out some of the general context. I will then deal with the specifics.
It has been my concern, as I said early in the Committee’s sittings, that for the past decade or more the burden placed on individual students and graduates to pay for a large proportion of their own higher education has substantially increased. However, there have not been rights and protections to go with that. My amendments are intended to address that key imbalance.
There are a number of reasons for our having reached the point at which students get a relatively raw deal, in spite of their making a significant investment. One is that for students, student unions and the National Union of Students, there has always been a tension between on the one hand a system increasingly driven by markets and competition, which has the potential to change the relationship between students and institutions from one of co-producers to one of consumers, and on the other hand the desire for students to be afforded better rights and protections.
It will come as no surprise to members of the Committee that student representatives—this was so during my time in the NUS but I think it is also fair to say it today—have concerns about a direction of travel towards students being seen as consumers rather than co-producers, and about putting market forces at the heart of the higher education system. That has led over the years to students not being nearly demanding enough about the degree of rights and protections that they should be afforded, and about to what degree they should be able to exercise greater muscle, whether as consumers or co-producers.
That is what is happening with the debate about the Government’s current higher education reforms. It is a terrible mistake that delegates at the NUS conference decided that the best response to the teaching excellence framework and, in particular, its relationship to the fees regime, would be not to engage with the process. The only outcome of that decision is that students’ voices are not heard. The Minister will not change his mind because the NUS does not have a seat at the table. He is more likely to engage and listen, as is Parliament, if students make their voice heard.
Similarly, the decision to try to sabotage the national student survey has no effect other than further to diminish the voice of students in the higher education system. Whether students see themselves as consumers or as co-producers, they should have the same goal—making sure that their voices are heard, that they are afforded basic rights and protections, and that they get the experience they sign up for.
Many members of the Committee will know that one of the key architects of the higher education funding system that we have today is Professor Nick Barr. I have had many arguments with Nick over the years about higher education funding. I have not changed my mind, he has not changed his, but I agree with him about the essential role that robust quality assurance, information and rights and protections have to play if competition is at the heart of the system. That is where we increasingly find ourselves. On the one hand, we could have more robust and intensive quality assurance, more inspections and more detailed inspections, but that hits two buffers, really. The first is the cost of the intensity of such an  inspections regime, and the second is the threat to institutional autonomy. The alternative, which is what my amendments look for, is making sure that we have well-informed students, consumers or co-producers—it really does not matter which term we choose.
Information is crucial in ensuring that we have informed applicants matching themselves to the right course for their interests and ambitions. It is also important to make sure that students know, from the point of application, what they will get in return for their fee and for their time at university. Amendment 1 to clause 8 would place a duty on governing bodies of all registered providers
“to develop, publish and adhere to a Code of Practice”
on student information and to monitor and report on progress against expectations set out by that code of practice.
My amendment suggests a number of areas that the code of practice on student information would contain. The list is by no means exhaustive, because I tend to agree with the Minister that legislation should not be overly prescriptive, but I do not think it is unreasonable to expect that when a student applies to a course they should have some degree of understanding of what their contact time will be, of what they should expect every week, of the marking and assessment regime and of the kind of feedback they might expect from their assessment, as well as who might be in front of them—because universities can tend to put the star names in the prospectus and the PhD and masters students in the front of the lecture theatre. That would ensure that the students would understand the learning facilities that were available to all students, and would ensure that those expectations were not only well understood by students but well understood and adhered to by the institution.
I think that this could be a very powerful tool to make sure that students are not only well informed but can hold their institutions to account. That is the primary intention of the amendment and it is a theme I will refer to later. I hope that if the Minister cannot agree to the specific wording of this amendment he will at least agree with the principle, as well as to my assessment that there is much further to travel to ensure that students are well informed when they apply and when they are on their courses, and that they are better able to hold their institution to account, which will surely help to drive up standards for everyone across the system.

Jo Johnson: This should not be news to the hon. Gentleman; it featured prominently in our White Paper and has been a central feature of our approach to widening participation in the system. We have discussed the entirety of our widening participation and access reforms with the director of fair access and participation, Leslie Ebdon.